


i'm always waiting for you (to be waiting below)

by orphan_account



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Nathan Wesninski's Bad Parenting, Neil Josten as Nathaniel Wesninski, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Nathaniel blinked; Abby didn’t magically disappear.“But… If my father…”Abby squeezed his hands in her own.“We can help you, Nathaniel,” she assured him. “If you let us.”“Help,” Nathaniel said, more to himself than anyone else.It was an idea that felt like a dream come true, but he knew it would be nothing more than damnation when his father inevitably found out.He laughed. "I don't even know what that means."Abby nodded in a way that made Nathaniel think she had seen more than her fair share of the cruelty the world had to offer."It means what I said. Not much, but enough."--OR: Neil as an unfortunate prince, Andrew as a very intrigued cook, and a vaguely medieval backdrop.
Relationships: Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 16
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was just supposed to be a fluffy oneshot and then it spiraled out of control. Hope you enjoy :)

Only once before in Nathaniel’s life had he been allowed the luxury of having an apothecary take care of his injuries. That had been when he was just shy of tipping over the brink of death, so he was appropriately surprised when the door to his bedchamber opened to allow entrance to a woman with a badge depicting a snake-encircled staff sewn on the sleeve of her dress. 

Nathaniel’s wounds weren’t enough to make him forget proper manners, but the moment he started to swing his legs over the side of the bed, the woman was ignoring DiMaccio’s grunt of protest and rushing over to stop him. 

“Stop that,” she chided, carefully helping Nathaniel lean back against the headboard. “You shouldn’t be moving at all in this condition, Your Highness.”

Despite the haze filling his mind, Nathaniel didn’t wince at the title; after almost two decades of training himself against reacting to any names having to do with his status or heritage, slackening all of the muscles in his face had become instinctual.

“Sorry,” he managed to say, more so because he felt as though he _should_ say something than because of any actual remorse. 

The woman sighed and absentmindedly patted his shoulder. “It’s alright, honey. I just don’t want you to get hurt any more than you already are.”

Nathaniel barely held back the bitter laugh that fought to escape his chest at that. 

“Now,” she said, offering him a small smile, “I’m Abigail Winfield, the palace’s on-call apothecary. You can call me Abby, and the boy over there is my apprentice, Aaron.”

With a jolt, Nathaniel realized that there was someone else in the room aside from the apothecary--Abby--and his father’s guard. The short blond man was still hovering by the door and there was a large leather satchel clutched in his arms that halted his movement halfway through an attempt at a bow. 

Mouth set in a deep scowl, he said, “Aaron Minyard, at your service, Your Highness.”

“Oh, give that to me, Aaron,” Abby told him. She stepped over to him and hefted the satchel into her arms before carrying it over and carefully setting it at the foot of the bed. Then, she twisted around and raised an eyebrow at DiMaccio. “If you don’t mind…?”

DiMaccio sneered but obligingly opened the door.

“I will be directly outside,” he warned. “It would be in your best interest if you merely did your job and went on your way, Miss Winfield.”

“I wouldn’t think of doing anything else,” Abby said stiffly. 

DiMaccio smiled in a way that was decidedly unkind and shut the door behind him. In the silence that followed, the sound of a key turning in the lock was ominously loud.

Abby eventually broke it by moving over to begin pulling an array of vials and jars and boxes out of the satchel. After a second of hesitation, Aaron stepped up to join her and started lining up the items in some order that meant nothing to Nathaniel but probably made perfect sense to the two of them. 

“Now, Your Highness,” Abby said, and her voice was light in a way that Nathaniel knew, courtesy of a great deal of personal experience, was forced. “I’m going to ask that you tell me how you were injured. It’s important for determining what treatment we should use to get you fixed up.”

Nathaniel stared resolutely at a chip in the paint on the wall opposite the bed.

Abby sighed. “Can you at least tell me whether these are the result of an accident?”

Because it was obvious the apothecary was under no illusions about how he got hurt, Nathaniel gritted out, “No. They weren’t.”

“Were you training?” she asked next.

Nathaniel thought of being five years old, his father’s icy blue eyes drilling into his own as he dragged a knife across Nathaniel’s chest and said, _If this is what it takes to make you remember the proper way for a prince to behave, do not make the mistake of thinking I will ever hesitate to revisit this lesson as many times as is necessary._

Emperor Nathan Wesninski was the farthest thing from a man of his word, but he had kept true to the promise he had made that day. 

“In a way,” Nathaniel said tightly. 

Abby nodded slowly, flicked her eyes down to the traces of blood seeping through the fabric of his tunic and trousers, and turned to Aaron. 

“Get started making more yarrow salve,” she told him. 

Nathaniel did not meet her gaze when she turned her attention back to him, instead choosing to keep his eyes directed at a small patch of sunlight on the floor beside the bed. He wasn’t quite sure what time it was, but he did know that the sun had already been rising by the time his father deemed their lesson from last night finished. 

Abby sighed again and gestured to his torso. “Alright, shirt off.”

At that, Nathaniel jerked, his eyes jumping over to meet the apothecary’s unimpressed stare. 

He swallowed. “Do I have to?”

“Considering all your wounds are underneath it, yes,” Abby said. 

Nathaniel knew that if his father had called in an apothecary for him, he would only have gone to someone who he trusted to be discreet and to keep quiet about whatever they saw. Still, it was impossible to fight the deeply ingrained instinct to hide, hide, hide.

“Can’t you just give me whatever it is I need to use to treat them, and then let me do it myself?” he tried. 

“No,” Abby told him. “Now, take it off.”

Nathaniel threw a glance over at where Aaron was busy grinding something in a small wooden bowl. He looked back at Abby before sending a pointed stare in the direction of the door.

“I don’t need to remind you that this is something you should forget about the moment you step through that doorway, do I?”

Something in Abby’s expression softened. She placed a finger on Nathaniel’s chin to turn his face back towards her and said, “Nathaniel, I promise that neither of us is going to say anything that will get you into any trouble. Whatever we see in this room, it stays in this room.”

Nathaniel nodded shakily and, since he didn’t seem to have any other choice, reached down to grab at the hem of his tunic. He couldn’t hold back a wince at the way the movement stretched the cuts and slashes on his arms, and Abby was immediately there to help him.

A moment later, the shirt was off, and Nathaniel didn’t miss the way Abby’s shoulders went rigid with tension, her mouth parted in a silent gasp. Across the room, Aaron’s sharp exhalation of _shit_ was heard loud and clear. 

Whatever they had expected based on what they had already seen combined with his reluctance to undress, he was certain it wasn’t this. The ruined canvas of his body was hardly something anyone would ever think to associate with a high-born prince, after all. Scars weren’t unexpected in people like him, but only the kinds that came from minor accidents during training, and occasionally something a little more gruesome from time spent on a battlefield. The nightmare that was Nathaniel’s body, however, was something entirely different. 

It was a masterpiece in purposeful destruction, a testament to the truth of what went on behind closed doors when no one was looking. 

Clenching his jaw tight, he asked, “What do you need to do?”

“Nathaniel,” Abby started. 

He gave her a sharp look, one that was partially a reminder of the threat currently listening in just outside the door and partially a reproach for the pity he heard in her voice. 

“What do you need to do?” he repeated.

Abby’s mouth twisted downwards in a displeased curve, but she merely nodded her acquiescence and grabbed something from within the leather satchel. Nathaniel’s stomach clenched when he realized that something was a spool of white thread that was quickly followed by a bright silver needle.

“I need stitches?” he asked. 

Abby raised an eyebrow as she began threading the needle. “Yes.”

Nathaniel sucked in a breath. He had been wondering why his father had sent for an apothecary when it had only been another one of his routine lessons, but the damage must have been worse than he had originally assumed. 

He was never allowed to stitch up the injuries his father left on him; the resulting messy scars were meant to be reminders of his many failings. 

“I’m going to clean everything up a bit first, alright?” Abby continued. She set the threaded needle down on the bedside table and looked over to the curtained doorway on the other side of the bed. “Is there fresh water in the bathroom?”

Nathaniel nodded. 

It wouldn’t be entirely fresh, but since he hadn’t been able to manage to do anything more than collapse onto the bed when he returned to his room early in the morning, the tub of water for his bath would still be there. Since he doubted Abby wanted to interact with DiMaccio any more than necessary, it would have to do.

The apothecary nodded. 

“I’ll finish that,” she told Aaron, crossing the room to take the bowl away from him. “You grab the water.”

Aaron complied without saying a word; the room fell silent but for the sounds of the pestle hitting the side of the bowl as Abby worked on the yarrow. A moment later, Aaron returned with the bucket the servants used to fill the bath, water just barely avoiding sloshing over the rim. 

“I think we should set it by the fire for a bit,” he told Abby, though he clearly wasn’t asking for permission to do so as he was already carrying the bucket over to the hearth. “I don’t know when it was brought up from the well, but it’s completely cooled.”

Abby nodded. “We’ll give it a few minutes, then.”

Those few minutes were some of the most awkwardly painful of Nathaniel’s life. He split his attention between stubbornly avoiding looking at both Aaron and Abby, and desperately hoping that neither of them would say anything to break the silence. It was a byproduct of his unconventional upbringing--he could charm a room or manipulate one of his father’s nobles without batting an eye, but when it came to making meaningless conversation with someone who had no ulterior motives, Nathaniel was a ship lost at sea.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he would do if one of them attempted to make small talk, but jumping out the window into the garden below seemed a reasonable option. 

Thankfully, Aaron didn’t seem the type, and Abby was too busy finishing up with the yarrow paste, so Nathaniel was saved from the possibility of further injury. 

“I think we’re ready,” Abby finally said. 

She set the bowl down on the bedside table alongside the needle and thread and then helped Aaron lug the heated water over the floor near the bed. A washcloth produced from the satchel was dipped into the water and wrung out, and then Abby set about meticulously cleaning each of Nathaniel’s wounds. 

It wasn’t pleasant, but it was nothing compared to what Nathaniel had experienced mere hours ago and a dozen times before that, so he had no trouble keeping his expression blank. 

The same couldn’t be said for when Abby dropped the blood-soaked cloth in the pink-tinged water and picked up the needle to begin stitching closed the worst of the gashes on his stomach and arms. At least both Abby and Aaron were smart enough to not comment on his white-knuckled grip on the bed sheets. 

What felt like an eternity later, Abby leaned back and let her eyes rove over Nathaniel’s torso, checking that everything was done. 

“Aaron,” she said, and Aaron handed over both the newly made bowl of yarrow paste as well as a previously prepared jar of the pale-yellow goop. 

As she began to carefully apply it over the injuries, Abby told Nathaniel, “I’m going to leave the jar with you, and I want you to put it on everything twice a day for the next couple of days. After that, you can just apply it to the worst of these cuts once every other day, preferably at night before you go to sleep.”

She looked up at him expectantly and he dutifully repeated: “Twice a day for two days then once every other day at night.”

“Good,” Abby said, dabbing on a last bit of the paste before pulling away and handing the bowl off to Aaron, who began to wipe it down with another clean cloth. “Now, I’ll need to see you again in a fortnight to take the stitches out. Is that going to be a problem?”

Nathaniel hesitated. His father might have been in a good enough mood today to send for Abby, but there was no guarantee that he would feel the same way about recalling her in two weeks' time. It was more likely than not that Nathan would just cut the sutures out himself if Nathaniel suggested having the apothecary back to do it. 

“Is it something that I can do myself?” he eventually asked. 

“Preferably not, but technically, yes,” Abby said. She went on to explain what he’d need to do when the time came, and Nathaniel made sure to pay attention to every word. 

When she was done, she made him repeat back everything she’d said, just to be sure he understood. Then, she nodded, patted his hand gently, and began to return her supplies to the leather satchel they had come out of. In the midst of doing so, she exchanged a glance with Aaron, who promptly nodded. Nerves sparking, Nathaniel tensed. 

As her apprentice grabbed the bucket of bloody water, Abby shoved the rest of her things into the bag and twisted to face Nathaniel, grabbing his hands in a surprisingly tight grip. 

The door opened, and Nathaniel heard Aaron ask, “Where do you want me to get rid of this, sir?” but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from Abby’s burning stare. 

“Nathaniel,” she whispered, “I understand that you are afraid of angering your father. I understand that you are in a complicated situation and that you have very little power to do anything about it.”

Reflexively, he jerked away from Abby and her words. What was she implying? Didn’t she know what would happen if any of this got back to his father?

“And I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to do,” she promised, her grip tightening on his hands. “But you should know that there are some things we can do for you, _if_ you choose to accept our help.” 

Nathaniel shook his head hard enough to make the receding fuzziness return with a vengeance. “You can’t. _I_ can’t.”

The look in Abby’s eyes was both sad and furious. 

“I know,” she said. “There are many things that we can’t do. But that doesn't mean there’s nothing that can be done to make your situation just a little bit easier. There’s someone I know, and if you agree to it, I can have her help Aaron get around the guards to deliver medical supplies to you for whenever you might need them. It won’t be much, not at any one time, but something small every few days will be enough to give you a supply to fall back on the next time something like this is done to you.”

Nathaniel blinked; Abby didn’t magically disappear. He shook his head again, but it was a lot less emphatic this time. 

“But… If my father…”

Abby squeezed his hands in her own. 

“We _can_ help you, Nathaniel,” she assured him. “If you let us.”

“Help,” Nathaniel said, more to himself than anyone else. 

It was a foreign concept, an idea that felt like a dream come true, but he knew it would be nothing more than damnation when his father inevitably found out. 

In his mind, Nathaniel’s mother screamed for him to stop, to turn away, to remember that it was always best to do whatever it took to keep Nathan happy and nothing more.

He laughed, but it was a brittle, bitter thing. “I don’t even know what that means.” 

Abby nodded in a way that made Nathaniel think she had seen more than her fair share of the cruelty the world had to offer. 

“It means what I said,” she told him. “Not much, but enough.”

Nathaniel turned the words over in his mind, trying to find some catch or loophole that would reveal to him the hidden motive behind the apothecary’s offer, trying to think of some reason to turn her down beyond Lola’s knives and his father’s cleaver. 

Because the truth was Nathaniel was going to be punished no matter what. He could walk away from this right now and it wouldn’t make a difference to the fact that come two, three, four weeks from now, he would still face his father’s wrath for some mistake or another. It was the cycle his life had followed for as long as he could remember, and there was no reason that it would suddenly stop, now. 

There was nothing to lose. 

“Okay,” he said. Then, stronger, “Okay.”

Abby’s smile was blindingly bright as she repeated it back to him: “Okay.”

Outside, the sound of boots pounding against the stone floor faded into existence, and Nathaniel ripped his hands away from Abby. For her part, she moved quickly to close up her satchel and step away from the bed. 

The door swung open, and DiMaccio stalked into the room with a scowl twisting over his lips. He scanned the room, but there was nothing to find.

Promises couldn’t be seen, after all. They were only as real and reliable as the people who made them.

Nathaniel wondered how Abby’s would prove to be. 

“Are you finished?” DiMaccio asked Abby once he’d found everything to be satisfactory. 

“Yes,” she told him. “If you could show us the way out, sir, it would be much appreciated.”

DiMaccio nodded, and the three of them filed out of Nathaniel’s bedchamber. The door thudded shut behind them, but he was so caught up in his swirling thoughts that he barely heard the sound of the lock clicking into place. 

Abby’s promise of help hadn’t been for much, and it paled in comparison to what his father would do to him if and when he found out that Nathaniel had been consorting with outsiders, but it was _something_.

Not much. But enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron was too grateful to be annoyed--and he was also too grateful to be wary of Andrew’s easy agreement. If he hadn’t been so harried, his twin would have questioned why Andrew seemed so ready to help him out when, usually, he took every opportunity to say no to the things that people demanded of him.  
> If Aaron had been less harried, he would have immediately caught onto the fact that Andrew had ulterior motives in agreeing to take over acting as a delivery boy for the princeling.  
> Because although Abby and Bee and even Aaron might have been ready and willing to aid Prince Nathaniel out of the kindness of their hearts at the first sign that he might need help, Andrew wasn’t quite so easily won over. (He also didn’t do one-sided deals, but that was a bridge he would cross when and if he came to it with Nathaniel.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy reading :)
> 
> \--
> 
> Chapter specific warnings: Implied/referenced abuse

No matter what other people may have said, Andrew Minyard was not a naturally paranoid person, and _fuck_ anyone who insinuated that he didn’t have control over his own mind by saying so.

What he was, was simply a man of his word: When he made a deal or a promise or a vague agreement, he stuck by his end of things, no matter what. Sometimes, that meant he had to be suspicious, especially when those on the other end of these deals decided to make his job infinitely more difficult by keeping secrets from him. 

(Bee would say he was actually just protective of the people he cared about, that his deals and promises and agreements were the armor he used to disguise that care, to disguise what he perceived as weakness, but Bee’s advice was, for the most part, regulated to the conversations they had between just the two of them in the garden outside her cottage and had no place in Andrew’s everyday life.)

As it was, it was his unfortunate other half who was currently making it so that he had the appearance of being overly paranoid. 

Aaron had been sneaking off every other day or so for the past fortnight without telling Andrew--or anyone else, for that matter--where he was going or what he was doing. Normally, when his twin went off for one of his oh-so-secret trysts with the bubbly city guard he was so fond of, Aaron would at least mention something about it to Nicky, and Andrew could confirm that _that_ had been what his brother was up to by casually brandishing one of his knives at their cousin. 

What Aaron had been doing recently, though…

Well. Andrew wasn’t paranoid by nature, but his twin had been suspiciously tight-lipped about whatever the fuck was going on. 

The fact that every time he snuck away from Palmetto Village, he carried a bag stuffed full of _something_ , and when he returned, it was with the satchel from the previous excursion, now empty-- _that_ , more than anything else, put Andrew on edge and made him think that Aaron had been getting up to something much, much more dangerous than fooling around with some girl. 

And now that Andrew had his additional bargain with the notorious Kevin Day to think about, he had to be more cautious than usual. 

So, when Aaron rushed up to him late one morning while he was taking a smoke break between shifts at Eden’s and shoved one of those mysterious bags into his arms, Andrew was fully prepared to jump on the opportunity to find out what his brother had gotten himself involved in. 

“Andrew,” Aaron gasped. “I need your help.”

Of course, Aaron didn’t need to know he was so willing to do whatever it took to find out about his little secret. 

Andrew raised an eyebrow. “I am working.”

Aaron shoved his hands through his tangled hair and huffed a frustrated curse that, under any other circumstances, would have made Andrew the opposite of amenable to his pleas for help, and said, “Look, I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important. Abby was called in for a birth, so I have to stay back and watch the shop for the next few hours, but someone needs to deliver this, and since _I_ can’t…”

Immediately and involuntarily, Andrew’s thoughts flashed back to his brother on the other side of a bathroom door as the effects of doctored herbs were drained out of his system. He wondered if his twin really was that fucking stupid. 

“Oh?” he asked with only the barest hint of anger in his voice. 

Aaron threw his hands in the air. “For the love of… It’s just medical supplies, Andrew, not fucking drugs.”

Experimentally, Andrew shifted his grip on the bag in his hands. Inside, vials clinked against one another and some kind of liquid sloshed inside a container. He thought he could feel what were probably rolls of bandages through the thick fabric of the satchel. 

Satisfied, he asked, “And who is the lucky recipient?”

Aaron grimaced, as though the mere thought of whoever was on the other end of this exchange was enough to curdle his insides. 

“Ah,” he said. “That would be Nathaniel.”

Andrew was an expert at maintaining a perfectly neutral expression, but even he couldn’t stop the way his eyebrows shot up at _that_ particular development.

“Nathaniel,” he repeated. “As in Nathaniel Wesninski. Prince Nathaniel Wesninski.”

“The one and only,” Aaron said drily. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair once more. “Abby was called in by the Emperor to patch his son up from a _‘training accident’_ a couple of weeks ago, and… Well, you know Abby.”

Andrew did, in fact, know Abigail Winfield, and he knew that if there had been even the slightest indication that His Royal Highness’s life wasn’t quite the cushy high-life that one would expect of the heir to an empire, she and her bleeding heart wouldn’t have been able to resist the chance to help. 

And he knew someone else who would be just as eager to throw her aid at a disadvantaged princeling. 

“Bee’s been helping you get by the guards, hasn’t she?” he guessed as he slung the satchel over his shoulder. 

Relief washed over Aaron’s face at the clear sign of agreement and he nodded rapidly. 

“Yes,” he said. “Well, Renee has been, more recently, now that we’ve got it all figured out for the most part. You know where to find her--she’ll show you how to get to where you need to go.”

Andrew nodded, not entirely displeased with the notion of seeing Renee Walker. It had been a long while since he had seen her one-on-one, now that he thought about it. 

“Off you go, then, brother dear,” he told his twin. “Run along.”

Aaron was too grateful, just then, to be annoyed by Andrew’s mocking. He simply nodded his thanks once more and took off running in the direction of Abby’s apothecary. 

That was good, though, Andrew thought as he opened the back door of the tavern and slipped inside. 

Aaron wasn’t just too grateful to be annoyed--he was also too grateful to be wary of Andrew’s easy acceptance and agreement. If he hadn’t been so harried, his twin would have questioned why Andrew seemed so ready to help him out when, usually, he took every opportunity to say _no_ to the things that people demanded of him. 

If Aaron had been less harried, he would have immediately caught onto the fact that Andrew had ulterior motives in agreeing to take over acting as a delivery boy for the princeling.

Because although Abby and Bee and even Aaron might have been ready and willing to aid Prince Nathaniel out of the kindness of their hearts at the first sign that he might need help, Andrew wasn’t quite so easily won over. (He also didn’t do one-sided deals, but that was a bridge he would cross when and if he came to it with Nathaniel.)

Besides, if the princeling _did_ require help, then that could prove to be just as troublesome for Andrew. Because someone in Nathaniel’s position shouldn’t have needed the kind of aid Abby and Bee could offer. Andrew was hardly one to make assumptions based on someone’s position in the social hierarchy of the world--he had learned firsthand that social rank meant absolute shit when it came to the lives that people led behind closed doors--but even he could admit to himself that the kind of trouble a prince might be in wasn’t the kind of trouble that Abby or Bee or any of them was used to dealing with. 

There was only one man in the world who could cause trouble for the heir to the Wesninski Empire, and that man wasn’t someone Andrew wanted any of _his_ people drawing the attention of. 

No, Andrew had promised to protect Aaron, even if it meant protecting him from himself and his occasional altruistic impulses, and he would do just that. 

It was time Nathaniel Wesninski reckoned with someone who wouldn’t be fooled quite so easily by his shitty damsel-in-distress facade. And if Andrew _was_ convinced, then… 

But that was a question for the future. For now, he still had another hour on the clock, and then he could head off to Baltimore. Thankfully, the capital of the Wesninski Empire was just a few miles away from Palmetto, and he wouldn’t be traveling for more than an hour. 

Thank fuck for small mercies.

Despite his hate for Nathan Wesninski, the Butcher of Baltimore and Emperor of the Wesninski Empire, and for everything the psychopath stood for--the wars and the casual bloodshed and the tyrannical laws of the land that had led to the suffering of far too many of the people under Andrew’s protection--this was not Andrew’s first time sneaking onto the grounds of the palace located on the outskirts of the city. 

Bee was the Royal Gardener and had been for the entire time that Andrew had known her, and there had been numerous occasions where he had donned the garb of a low-level groundskeeper so he could do in and see her for some reason or another. And when he had begun to allow the thing between him and Reene, the deceptively mild gardener who specialized in tending to the orchards at the back of the royal property to grow, the number of occasions had only increased. 

(Renee liked to call it a _friendship_. Andrew preferred to call it a _mutually beneficial partnership_.)

It was the one flaw in the castle’s otherwise perfect security measures: There were too many servants, and their turnover rate was too ridiculously high thanks to the notoriously demanding (and psychotic) royal household, for the guards to even dream of ever keeping track of them all. Instead, the soldiers at the gates and stationed around the property had just taken to letting in anyone wearing a proper uniform, only pulling someone aside when they were being openly suspicious. 

It wasn’t a good practice, since though it was difficult to get one’s hands on an authentic and convincing uniform, the fact that Andrew had one proved that it wasn’t impossible. The entire roster of the Palace Guard would probably be executed if the Emperor ever found out about the unofficial protocol, but Andrew wasn’t going to complain about it when it had proved to be so useful for his purposes. 

Since he had dressed himself in his usual stolen groundskeepers’ uniform before leaving Palmetto, Andrew didn’t need to pause before approaching the side gate meant for servants and messengers and the like. Belatedly, it occurred to him that there might end up being a problem if Aaron hadn’t disguised himself in the same way, but the guards simply took in the brown tunic and the insignia of a blood-red handprint embroidered on the front in cheap thread and didn’t hesitate to open the gate for him. 

(In the privacy of his mind, Andrew thought: _Imbeciles_.)

Inside the bounds of the outer wall, he was immediately greeted by the sight of the massive palace rearing its head up from the ground in front of him. 

It was a monstrosity in red stone, with a tower in each of the four corners that was topped with spike-adorned battlements. The entire roofline was encircled by slightly less impressive (but no less effective in the case of an assault) parapets, and from a pole lodged in the very center of the roof streamed a black flag emblazoned with that same gruesome handprint. Though he could not see it from where he presently stood, Andrew knew that in the front of the building was the black-tiled courtyard that led up to a massive set of wrought-iron doors, where at least two dozen guards were always stationed.

As imposing as the entire thing was, though, the most interesting part of the spectacle was without a doubt in the back of the structure. 

Sticking out from the second story was a covered bridge that led to a fifth slightly shorter tower that was separate from the rest of the palace. Both the tower itself and the connecting bridge were made from the same red stone that was just a shade darker than the material that made up the rest of the building, the result of it all being an addition made only a decade or so ago to the otherwise centuries-old castle. 

Among members of the palace staff, and to a lesser degree the people of the city of Baltimore, it was rumored that the tower housed the Emperor’s son.

Those rumors usually claimed that the addition had been an act of extravagant generosity and concession to his son on the Emperor’s part, a way of spoiling his precious heir by building him his very own special section of an already ostentatious palace. From where Andrew stood, though, with the new information he had gathered from Aaron, he had to admit that it looked suspiciously like some kind of fairy-tale prison. 

Still, he wasn’t one to judge based on appearances alone, and he supposed he was about to find out the truth of it, anyway, whatever that turned out to be. 

Andrew repositioned the bag slung over his shoulder and strode towards the back of the palace where both the infamous tower and the orchards that Renee watched over were located. One could never be quite sure where Bee might be in the sprawling palace grounds, but Renee’s location was always guaranteed to be the same. 

“Renee,” he called out when he finally found her, perching in the branches of an apple and with a basket hung around her neck by a leather cord. 

She glanced down, a smile dawning on her face when she laid eyes on him. “Hello, Andrew. This is a pleasant surprise. What brings you here?”

In answer, Andrew held up the bag Aaron had given him. 

“Ah,” Renee said. “Is Aaron alright?”

Andrew shrugged. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Brushing her hands off on her loose skirt and tightening the cord of the basket, Renee began to climb down from the tree. When she finally reached the ground, she extended a hand and told him, “I can take that.”

Andrew grinned, faux-bright, and shook his head. “Oh, no, we wouldn’t want to distract you from your work. Just tell me what to do and I’m sure I can manage without too much trouble.”

Renee frowned but must have understood something of the reasoning behind his intentions because she didn’t protect or make any further attempts to confiscate the satchel from him. 

“Alright,” she agreed. “Bring it over to the tower, and find the second window up on the left side.”

“Is that all?” 

“Aaron usually just calls up, I believe, but it’s later in the day than when he usually tries to be here by,” Renee informed him. “You might end up having to throw something at the window, so he knows you’re there.”

Andrew lifted an eyebrow. “And alert the guards that there’s a fox in the chicken coop?”

“There’s never any guards outside on the ground,” she said, “and if what Nathaniel has told Aaron is true--and I assume it is, since there’ve yet to be any problems--then there aren’t any inside the tower either.”

Now _that_ was interesting.

“No guards?” he mused. “Not even one little one?”

Renee smiled. “Not one.”

“How strange,” Andrew hummed. “It must be a very well-trained lapdog if His Majesty is so lax about it.”

Something a little sad seeped into Renee’s eyes at that, and Andrew wondered just how many people the princeling had managed to capture under his spell. 

“Something like that,” she said. She turned back to the tree, but not without calling over her shoulder, “Do stop by and say goodbye before you leave.”

Andrew didn’t say anything in answer, just nodded even though he knew she couldn’t see it and began to make his way over to the unguarded tower. Whatever he had said about the prince being well-trained, it was still incredibly good that there wasn’t even one guard stationed somewhere near the tower, within or without, to keep an eye on him.  
One would think that the Emperor would be more concerned with the safety of his only heir. 

(Though Andrew supposed if Abby and Bee believed that the prince was in need of their intervention, maybe Nathan Wesninski had a different definition of “safety” than most people did.)

The window was, all in all, easy to locate. Andrew took in the curtains fluttering in the barely-there breeze and the faint shadow he could make out moving beyond them, and decided that he did not care enough to announce his presence by calling out to Nathaniel Wesninski. 

Instead, he found a moderately-sized rock on the ground nearby, eyed the distance between his arm and the second-story window, and hurled the rock at the window.

It whooshed through the gauzy curtains and Andrew heard the satisfying sound of an impact, followed by a choked _oomph!_ and another, slightly louder crash. 

Seconds later, the curtains were torn aside to reveal a very angry, very pretty red-headed man with _very_ angry, _very_ pretty ice-blue eyes. 

(Why the fuck had no one informed him that the princeling was ridiculously attractive? This was important information. Important information that, apparently, no one had deemed important enough to inform him of, which meant that he was left standing there likely looking like a gaping _fish_. Excellent.)

“Aaron never said anything about having a twin,” the prince accused. Then. the surprise on his features twisted back into anger, and he said: “Fuck you, by the way. Was that really necessary?”

“Probably not,” Andrew deadpanned after he was certain he had schooled his expression back to his customary blankness. Lazily, he held up the bag from Aaron. “Are you going to come down for this, or do I get to practice my aim again?”

Obviously, Andrew was aware enough of the situation and could read between the lines well enough that he knew it was unlikely Nathaniel had a way of exiting that tower. The only reason the Emperor would be so unconcerned with assigning guards to watch over the tower and the prince contained within it was if other precautions had been taken to make sure that said prince remained inside said tower. But Andrew was interested in what the princeling’s reaction would be to the suggestion of leaving, and Nathaniel did not disappoint. 

The way he immediately recoiled from the open window, tripping over the trailing curtains in his haste to move away from it and ending up crashing to the floor, was both enlightening and entertaining. 

(If the entertainment was slightly lessened by the thought of what must have been to Nathaniel to elicit such a reaction, then that was no one’s business but his own. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.)

So it seemed the fear of God had been put in the princeling to keep him contained, alongside whatever locked door and other nonsense had been installed on the interior of the tower to keep him inside it. 

Though, maybe there were no locked doors. If the unsecured window and Nathaniel’s rapid retreat from it were anything to go by, maybe fear was all that was needed to keep him in that tower. 

Andrew found that there was a significant part of him that despised seeing that kind of involuntary, all-consuming fear in Nathaniel, but he quickly cut off that train of thought before it could go any further.

As of right now, the princeling was not his problem. Andrew had no deal with him and he had too many other responsibilities to be concerned with someone he didn’t have a deal with. 

(Besides, if he did end up deeming Nathaniel worthy and making a deal with him, it would hardly be to help him with whatever mental issues and trauma he so clearly had. No, that would remain Bee and Abby’s concern even if Andrew struck up a deal with the prince.)

He was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of Nathaniel’s voice saying, “No. Let me get the rope and I’ll bring it up.”

Again, in his mind where no one else could hear him, Andrew thought that the guards the Emperor employed were morons. How the fuck could they be so incompetent? Andrew could kidnap their precious princeling--right here, right now--and he doubted anyone would even notice. 

(Well, the guards at the gate would likely take note if the Emperor’s son was with him, but they could always just scale the wall.)

Andrew watched with something that was part amusement and part disbelief as the prince threw down a chain of tied-together clothes. They were some of the most absurd outfits he had ever seen, and considering he worked at a popular tavern by the coast, where many travelers and foreigners and (occasionally) _circus members_ stopped for a night of cheap entertainment, that was saying something. 

Still, Andrew said nothing as he tied the satchel to the sleeve of the last item of clothing in the rope, offering Nathaniel a nod when he was done.

The princeling proceeded to haul the rope along with the newly attached bag up through the window and into his room--Andrew took note of how easily he did so; it seemed Nathaniel must not have spent _all_ his time contained in that tower, because he was far from weak. 

When the bag had disappeared from sight, he bent to grab something from the floor and chucked it out the window. One of the other bags Andrew had seen Aaron carrying earlier in the week landed by his feet. 

Andrew grabbed it and slung this new bag over his shoulder to replace the old one. He straightened and lifted his gaze to find that Nathaniel was still watching him, too-blue eyes both curious and suspicious as he met Andrew's own hazel ones.

"Is..." The words seemed to catch in his throat, and the prince swallowed before pressing onward. "Is Aaron alright?"

While he didn't have all the details, Andrew thought he had a general idea of why Nathaniel would be worried that his twin was _not_ alright. He debated just shrugging and walking away, but there was a niggling reminder in the back of his mind that he was going to, very likely, have to make a deal with the prince in the future, and abandoning him to his guilt wouldn't be good for _that_.

"I wouldn't be here if he wasn't," he said.

Nathaniel seemed to read into the fact that there was more meaning to that statement than just confirmation that Aaron was alive and kicking--but, since he wasn't exactly privy to the inner workings of Andrew's mind and the beginning ideas for a new deal that were circling there, he merely looked confused at what that deeper meaning could be.

And Andrew wasn't about to explain before he was ready, so he simply put two fingers to his temple in a vague salute and told Nathaniel, “Until the next time,” before spinning on his heel and striding away from the tower.

Yes, _until the next time_ was right. Because what had even just a moment ago been a vague thought in the back of Andrew's mind had solidified itself into a concrete decision: He was going to make a deal with Nathaniel Wesninski.

They had barely spoken more than a handful of words to one another, but Andrew didn’t necessarily need to converse with someone to figure them out, at least partly. He had gathered enough information about the princeling’s situation and temperament that he could begin to work out exactly what he would offer Nathaniel in exchange for what _he_ needed from _him_. 

Because as much as Andrew absolutely fucking despised the thought of needing anything, he needed the prince’s help, if he would give it. 

Because Andrew had made a deal with Kevin Day, and as of yet, he still hadn’t figured out just how he could successfully follow through on his end of that particular promise. But there was something that Nathaniel could give him that would finally, finally let him do just that. 

(It had been a stupid, impulsive promise, and Andrew hated that he had even made that deal in the first place. But Kevin had already followed through on his end and Andrew would never back out of a deal anyway, so here he was.)

In the end, even though consorting with the prince was dangerous and risky and had the potential to be very, very destructive--for Andrew and for Aaron and for Bee and very likely for anyone associated with them--the many possible ways in which he could be of value to Andrew outweighed the risk. He didn’t know everything there was to know about the prince or the situation-- _yet_ \--but he knew enough. 

Besides, even if he hadn’t entirely parsed out the many interesting facets and oddities of Nathaniel Wesninski, that just meant--

Oh, no.

Interesting. 

He thought Nathaniel was interesting.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks to everyone who read the first chapter and gave it some love with kudos/comments/etc <3<3  
> I'm gonna be posting new chapters every Monday (I was debating doing every other week, but I feel I have enough already written, though we'll see how quickly that falls through if the dreaded writer's block decides to visit...)  
> Anyway, I hope you liked it!! Kinda worried I messed up writing Andrew's personality but OH WELL too late now


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can’t,” he insisted. “Someone will see you climbing up.”  
> The twin tilted his head in consideration, and then he nodded.   
> “You’re right,” he agreed, beginning to turn away from the tower, and Nathaniel’s heart slowly came down from its frantic beating. “I will come back tonight.”  
> His heart began jackrabbiting again as he hissed, “No! What part of ‘you can’t’ do you not understand?”  
> But Aaron’s twin just ignored him and continued on his way away from the tower. Nathaniel swore viciously under his breath and slammed a fist against the wall beside the window, releasing another stream of curses when pain lanced up through his arm.   
> “Shit,” he breathed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the next chapter--it's part one of two chapters that were meant to be one, but it got too long so I split it into two. Anyway, happy reading!!
> 
> \--
> 
> Chapter warnings: Implied/referenced torture

Romero’s sword sliced through the air in a gleaming silver arc; Nathaniel stepped to the side and brought his own blade up to halt the blow. Romero bared his teeth and leaned forward for a second, pushing back against Nathaniel’s sword, and then he retreated. 

“Good job, Junior,” he laughed.

Nathaniel merely scowled at him as they resumed circling one another.

After a lifetime of putting up with the mocking approval of his father’s cronies, he was well-versed in ignoring what they said. Besides, they both knew Nathaniel was the better fighter, size and age be damned. Though, he could admit to himself that he wasn’t in his best form, today. 

Romero adjusted his hold on his weapon and shifted his weight slightly to the left. Nathaniel immediately jumped on the opportunity, darting forward and slamming himself full-force into the older man’s body. 

Training and fighting had never been anything but dirty in the Wesninski household. 

They went toppling to the ground together; Romero’s sword fell from his already weakened grip while Nathaniel quickly regained his bearings and rolled to kneel over him. He rested the edge of his sword against Romero’s neck, light enough to avoid drawing blood but hard enough for him to feel it. 

He clicked his tongue. “Shitty job, Malcolm.”

Romero growled and swung. The punch hit Nathaniel squarely above his ear and sent him sprawling across the sandy ground of the training arena. His sword lay on the ground a few--

The breath was forced out of his lungs as Romero landed a harsh kick to his ribs. Then another, another, another...

Nathaniel scrabbled at the ground blindly and came up with a handful of loose sand. He promptly hurled it into Romero’s eyes and he took great satisfaction in the hiss of pain that the man let out. But it was a thought recognized only briefly in the back of his mind, the majority of his focus on diving to grab his blade, wrapping his fingers around the hilt, _swinging_ \--

The blow caught Romero across the stomach, a thin slice trailing up from his navel and that wasn’t deep enough to do any real damage. It likely wouldn’t even scar, and it definitely wouldn’t be enough to put an end to this for the day. 

And Nathaniel needed for this to be over--there was nothing he loved more than training, than having a sword in his hand and his mind distracted by the adrenaline of being able to fight back against one of his father’s people without fear of the repercussions, but today was not a good day. He was far too distracted by the thoughts of Aaron and medical supplies and Aaron’s asshole of a twin that were hovering in the back of his mind to pay proper attention to a fight. There had already been enough close calls this session. Considering he had only just removed the stitches from his old injuries that morning, he didn’t feel like dealing with a new disaster tonight. 

And there was always one foolproof way to rile up a Malcolm sibling.

“Hey, Romero,” Nathaniel called.

Romero stood up from where he’d been bending to retrieve his sword and met Nathaniel’s glare. Nathaniel dug his feet into the ground and readied himself for what he knew would be coming. 

“You should tell your sister that she might want to step up her game a bit,” he said. “Lady Alize is visiting next week, and we wouldn’t want mother dearest to become...shall we say, expendable?”

Even as the last words were leaving his mouth, Nathaniel was already pivoting away and on the upswing. When Romero shouted and lunged forward, he was perfectly in position to bring his blade down and across the man’s back. 

Blood spurting from the new gash, Romero grunted and collapsed to his knees. Nathaniel stepped in front of him and placed the tip of his sword beneath his chin. Romero’s eyes burned with mad hate as they glared up at him. 

Nathaniel grinned. “Give her the message, yes?”

The moment he stepped inside his quarters and shut the door behind him, Nathaniel took a moment to just _stop_.

He let the air settle in his lungs, let his mind go blissfully blank, let his entire body relax.

When the minute was up, he released a breath and began pulling off his sweat-slicked leather gloves as he stepped deeper into his chambers. 

There was something about hurting his father’s people that always sparked a vicious war inside him--it was always a battle between the red-hot need to return their favors with an eye for an eye and the underlying fear that he was slowly becoming just like them. 

But it was a war he was familiar with waging, and just as familiar with pushing it down to be dealt with later.

He threw the gloves to the floor beside the bed but paused before ripping his tunic over his head, his attention moving over to the curtain-draped window.

Aaron always made his appearance in the grey hours of the morning, when no one but the gardeners and groundskeepers--the ones that Nathaniel assumed were Aaron’s supposed _help_ in sneaking inside the palace grounds, but he wasn’t going to pry--were around. He hadn’t shown up today, but…

But it _was_ around the time of day when his twin had shown up two days ago. 

Nathaniel wasn’t sure whether or not the twin’s visit would end up being a one time thing, but it couldn’t hurt to wait on getting into the bath for a few minutes just to see if he would come. The question of whether he would ever see Aaron’s twin again had been one of the most prevalent distractions in his thoughts--and wasn’t _that_ telling, that Nathaniel was so excited by the idea of having one more random stranger paying him five minute long visits every couple of days. 

But there was something...different about Aaron’s twin. Something assessing in those hazel eyes, something that reminded Nathaniel all too much of the look he sometimes caught in the mirror. 

Logically, that alone should have been enough to make him _not_ want to ever see Aaron’s twin again, considering his reflection wasn’t exactly a nice one. But no one had ever accused Nathaniel of making sound choices or of being logical, and, anyway, he was too intrigued to change his mind about wanting to see the man again, now.   
Like calling to like, and all that nonsense. 

Though, Nathaniel thought as he made his way over to the window, the _likeness_ that he saw in Aaron’s twin wasn’t an exact likeness, by any means. Whatever darkness of character he had recognized in Aaron’s twin was...subtler than what he saw in the mirror. More restrained. Controlled.

Nathaniel pulled aside the curtain. A glance down showed him that there was no one there, but he perched himself on the alcove the window was set in to wait, anyway. He could use a quiet moment to sort through his thoughts. 

Because as nice as it was to entertain the thought of getting to know Aaron’s twin better, as nice as it was to imagine peeling back his layers to reveal what was underneath, he knew it was one of the worst ideas he had ever had. It was dangerous, possibly more so than accepting Abby and Aaron’s help in the first place had been. That hadn’t been anything more than a calculated risk; when every day held the possibility of Nathan and his people being in the mood to use Nathaniel as their personal human canvas, the value of having a source of bandages and poultices far outweighed the chance of what might happen if he were caught. It was impersonal, a transaction between the helper and the helped. 

Yes, it was dangerous and nerve wracking. Yes, it would result in massive amounts of pain if, and very probably when, he were found out. But also, yes, his life would eventually go back to normal after the consequences ran their course. He would be in pain for a while, and he would likely be riddled with some amount of guilt for the rest of his life over whatever happened to Abby and Aaron and whoever was helping them, but in the end, he would eventually get over it and he would move on with his life. He would have to, in order to survive, and there was nothing in the world that Nathaniel did better than surviving. 

His thought process had taken an entirely different direction when it came to Aaron’s twin, though, and therein lay the problem. He wasn’t quite looking at him illogically, and he still didn’t know enough of him or about him to truly be looking at him for real personal interest, but there was a thin line, and Nathaniel knew he was in danger of eventually crossing it. 

The fact that he was even thinking so deeply about it was a clear indicator of how dangerous of a thought it was--he shouldn’t have been so mentally invested in someone he didn’t even know. 

So. 

Then again, Aaron’s twin might never show his face again, and Nathaniel could forget about all this ridiculousness forever. 

As if summoned by the thought, someone cleared their throat down below, and when Nathaniel’s vision focused, there the man himself was. 

“Hi,” he said, stupidly.

Aaron’s twin arched an eyebrow. “Where’s your ‘rope’?”

Nathaniel rolled his eyes and slid off the window sill to retrieve the chain of clothes from where he kept it hidden between the wardrobe and the wall. It was hardly the best hiding place, wasn’t even a good one when it came down to it, but he couldn’t be bothered to hide it more thoroughly when he was using it so often. And besides, DiMaccio and the other guards who conducted the random inspections of his room had stopped being all that thorough after the first few searches turned up nothing. 

Returning to the window, Nathaniel tossed down one end of the makeshift rope and waited while Aaron’s twin secured the bundle of supplies. It occurred to him that he should probably ask for the twin’s name. 

After the satchel had been hauled up and chucked under the bed for later inspection, Nathaniel brought the old bag to the window. 

But Aaron’s twin stopped him before he could throw it over. 

“Wait,” he said. “Send it back down.”

Nathaniel frowned. “What?”

The twin sighed and waved an indolent hand towards him and the window he leaned out of. “The rope. Send it back down.”

“Is there something else?” he asked despite not seeing anything. 

“No,” the man said in a tone that made Nathaniel bristle. “ _I_ am coming _up_.”

Completely at a loss for what in the world he could possibly say in answer to _that_ , Nathaniel just stared in silence. Up? _Up?_

“Excuse me?” he managed. “You…you’re _what_?”

“There is something we need to discuss,” Aaron’s twin explained, “and I am not going to do it with twenty feet between us. So, either I come up or you come down, and based on your previous reaction to that particular suggestion, _that_ it isn’t going to happen any time soon.”

“What could you possibly want to talk about?” Nathaniel questioned, because he couldn’t think of how to address anything else that had been said. No one could come _up_ any more than Nathaniel could go _down_. 

Aaron’s twin just stared up at him and offered no response. Nathaniel glared back, but he gave in first. 

“You _can’t_ ,” he insisted. “Someone will see you climbing up.”

The twin tilted his head in consideration, and then he nodded. 

“You’re right,” he agreed, beginning to turn away from the tower, and Nathaniel’s heart slowly came down from its frantic beating. “I will come back tonight.”

His heart began jackrabbiting again as he hissed, “No! What part of _‘you can’t’_ do you not understand?”

But Aaron’s twin just ignored him and continued on his way away from the tower. Nathaniel swore viciously under his breath and slammed a fist against the wall beside the window, releasing another stream of curses when pain lanced up through his arm. 

“Shit,” he breathed. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

Nathaniel spent the rest of the day in a continuous nervous breakdown. Even when Robin stopped by his room to conduct her daily cleaning routine, he couldn’t find it within himself to calm down enough to hold even the semblance of a normal conversation. He also couldn’t find it within himself to care all that much, though, his mind too consumed by the knowledge that there was a very high chance he was going to die that night. 

Part of him wanted to say it was irrational that all throughout dinner with his father and Lola he kept expecting Nathan’s cleaver to come flying through the air at him, but a larger part of him remembered the inch-deep puddle of blood that had spread across the dungeon floor when his mother bled out ten years ago. 

Because, when it came down to it, this was the more likely scenario and it was in many ways worse than his own death. Nathan, even in a blind rage, wouldn’t forget that he needed an heir and therefore could not kill his son--hurt and maim and ruin, yes, but not kill. Aaron’s twin, though, was a different story in the same way that Nathaniel’s mother had been: He was unimportant to Nathan and important, to a degree, to Nathaniel, and that meant that there would be no fate for him other than a long, drawn out death if he was caught tonight. 

When dinner ended without bloodshed and Nathaniel returned to his chambers, he had to restrain himself from locking the window. He had a feeling that that would only result in Aaron’s twin breaking the glass to gain entrance, and he didn’t want something of that sort to heighten the chances of them being found out. 

He forced himself to go into the washroom and go about his nightly routine as usual, but after that was finished he had nothing left to distract himself with, and he started pacing the length of the room. 

Nathaniel couldn’t run, but he still needed to move, anyway and anyhow.

Of course, that meant that he wasn’t keeping watch out the window, and Aaron’s twin was left staring up at the window with an unimpressed glare for some indeterminable amount of time before he checked again and found he’d arrived. 

Nathaniel stared down at him and he stared back. The heaviness weighing on his chest felt a little bit like impending doom. 

“The rope,” the twin finally said. 

Snapped out of whatever reverie he had fallen into, Nathaniel nodded and let down the makeshift rope with shaking hands. He didn’t trust himself to keep a hold of his end of the thing--because even though Aaron’s twin had to have the same diminutive height as Aaron did, from what Nathaniel could see with twenty feet between them, he looked significantly more...square--so he tied it securely around one of the legs of the bed. 

Aaron’s twin made quick work of scaling the wall, feet pressed firmly against the dark crimson stone of the tower as he hauled himself up hand over hand. When he reached the window, he ignored Nathaniel’s offered hand in favor of levering himself through the opening independently. Nathaniel, in turn, stepped back, folded his arms over his chest, and arranged his expression into something between annoyance and judgement. 

He might have felt like he was slowly dying on the inside, but that didn’t mean he had any intention of letting the twin _see_ that. 

Close up, Nathaniel could see the slight differences between the twins: Where Aaron held himself surely but stiffly, his twin’s posture was all casual confidence; where Aaron always seemed to have a slight furrow between his brows and a set to the slope of his jaw, his brother’s features held nothing but a carefully curated blankness. He also noticed that the twin was dressed in all black from head to toe, including the bands of cloth that stretched from his wrists to just beneath his elbows on both arms. The faint smell of smoke lingered around him, but Nathaniel couldn’t be sure whether that was the product of a tobacco habit or of whatever job he worked when he wasn’t busy risking his life to pay visits to noblemen. 

“I trust you had a safe trip,” he asked drily.

Aaron’s twin directed a blank look at him and settled himself on the floor with his back against the span of the wall beneath the window, and Nathaniel situated himself directly across from him but a good few feet away. He had no way of being certain about what the other man was hiding beneath those armbands, but he had enough experience with concealing weapons to know that they had the potential to be perfect for that purpose. 

Hence, a reasonable distance of separation.

“You know, it would be nice if I could get a name before we have this _discussion_ ,” Nathaniel commented when Aaron’s twin made no move to break the silence between them. “Because I have a feeling ‘Aaron’s twin’ isn’t going to work very well out loud.”

Said twin gave him a blank look, but said, “Andrew.”

Nathaniel turned the name over in his head--Andrew Minyard was fitting in some way he couldn’t quite put his finger on--and bit back a comment about how they were a matched set, Aaron-and-Andrew. 

“I’m here to offer you a deal,” Andrew informed him. 

He frowned--a deal was very different from a discussion. A discussion implied nothing more than talking, probably a good deal of lying and evasive-truth-telling on Nathaniel’s part. A deal, however, implied that Andrew wanted something from him, and there was nothing good that could come out of that.  
Despite that, Nathaniel found himself asking, “A deal?”

Andrew nodded. “Yes. First, though, we are going to play a game.”

Nathaniel fought the urge to narrow his eyes. “What kind of game?”

“A truth for a truth,” Andrew explained. “I will ask you a question, and you will answer honestly. Then, you will ask me something. And so on and so forth.”

“And how are you going to know if I’m telling the truth?” he asked before he could stop himself. 

It was a stupid question for a variety of reasons: Obviously, there was no real way for Andrew to be absolutely certain Nathaniel was telling the truth and vice versa; it was a question that made it obvious Nathanile was considering and likely intending to lie; the mocking tone of the words could very likely send Andrew right out the window and away from the palace, though that might not be such a bad thing, in the long run; the list went on and on. 

“I know you are going to tell the truth,” Andrew said slowly, “because you let Aaron and Abby help you, and because you didn’t lock that window when I told you I would be coming back tonight. You could have told any of us to fuck off at any time and we would have, but you didn’t.”

Nathaniel wanted to say that he didn’t lock the window because he didn’t think it would stop him. He wanted to argue that he had a feeling the kind of help Abby and Aaron had offered him was likely very different from whatever deal he wanted to propose. He wanted to mention that he _had_ told Andrew to fuck off, in a way, when he’d insisted against him coming up into the tower.

But for all the same reasons that Nathaniel hadn’t turned Abby away that first fateful day--there had been nothing to lose then, and there was still nothing to lose, now--he stayed quiet. Andrew interpreted his silence as the acceptance it was.

“Good,” he nodded. Then: “What was Abby cleaning up after?”

Nathaniel was thrown by the blunt nature of the question, but a second later he wondered why he was surprised in the first place. Andrew had been nothing but to the point since his first appearance; there was no reason his interrogation should be any different. 

But as skilled as Andrew seemed to be in weaponizing that straightforwardness, Nathaniel was just as practiced in his own weapon of choice.

He could think of a thousand different ways to evade truly answering that question. 

He recalled Abby questioning whether his injuries had really been the result of an accident during training and said, “I was training with my father.”

Andrew’s eyes momentarily sparked with something that was more amusement than annoyance, though.

“Your turn, then.”

Nathaniel didn’t have to consider for even a fraction of a second before he asked: “How have you and Aaron been able to get inside the gates so easily?”

It was a question born out of the instincts his mother had beaten and his father had carved into him: He needed to know all the weaknesses in his father’s defenses in the same way he needed to catalogue all the exits in a room. 

“Your family and their associates are notoriously nightmarish,” Andrew replied. “The servants who aren’t killed for their paltry mistakes are driven off in droves and replaced just as quickly. The guards understand that this makes any attempt at memorizing faces pointless. A good replica of Wesninski livery is as good a voucher as a memo from the Emperor himself.”

Nathaniel blinked. It was far from the answer he had expected, and yet he could only think that it was stupid of him to not have thought of it sooner. He had stopped trying to keep track of the rotating array of servants years ago, and he only dealt with a handful of them on any given day. 

Andrew sighed. “You are either far more idiotic or far more self-absorbed than I assumed.”

“Is that your next question?” 

The other man shook his head just once. “How much of your father’s public persona of psychopathy is an act?”

This question, Nathaniel had no problem with answering, though if Andrew had heard about how “nightmarish” the royal household was, then he should have had some idea of Nathan’s particular brand of insanity. Though, he supposed “nightmarish” could also simply be a descriptor of rich, entitled assholes. 

“None of it,” he said. 

Andrew just nodded, as though that had been the answer he was expecting. “And I suppose he’s just as charmingly insane at home as he is in front of the masses?”

It wasn’t really his turn, but it also wasn’t really a question, so Nathaniel answered anyway: “My father is perfectly charming, at least until he decides that your eyes would look better on the mantelpiece than in your skull.”

The corners of Andrew’s mouth twitched upwards, but he stayed quiet, waiting for Nathaniel to ask his next question.

Nathaniel knew he should probably ask something that would give him more information about the state of things beyond the walls of the palace or about what kind of deal Andrew might want to make with him or even about who Abby had been talking about when she said she knew someone who could help Aaron get past the guards. Something that would be important, something that would help him. 

He didn’t, though.

“What do you do?” he asked instead, and then clarified by adding, “For work, I mean. What’s your occupation when you aren’t risking your life making secret deliveries and climbing towers in the middle of the night?”

“That is a waste of a question,” Andrew pointed out. 

Nathaniel shrugged. “Probably.”

“I’m a cook,” he said. Before Nathaniel had a chance to say anything in response to that, he asked, “How did your mother die?”

Every muscle and tendon in his body tensed at the question; flashes of blood and blades and screams came ricocheting back from the depths of Nathaniel’s memory. Blood and blades and screams and blades and pain and death and his mother, his mother, his--

“Nathaniel. _Nathaniel_.”

He snapped his gaze up to meet Andrew’s. The blond man’s face was just as blank as it had been the entire time Nathaniel had known him, but there was some kind of question in his eyes. He swallowed. 

“Don’t ask me that,” he whispered. 

Andrew raised an eyebrow. “That is not how this game works.”

Nathaniel clenched his jaw. “No, the rules of the game said no lying. They said nothing about not answering.”

“Consider them amended,” he said. “How did your mother die?”

“Asshole,” Nathaniel snapped. 

He looked away to stare at the wall and take a steadying breath. He knew that if he told Andrew his mother died from a fatal illness, as per the story his father had concocted, there would be no way for him to truly know Nathaniel was lying. But he also clearly suspected that the late Empress had died somewhat differently--there was no reason to ask that question, otherwise--and it felt more than a little bit like a test. 

The only question was, how much did Nathaniel care about passing?

Taking in another lungful of air, he turned back to Andrew. 

“My mother was an extraordinary woman,” he said. “She married my father to make sure there would be a good relationship between the Wesninski and Hatford Empires. She knew he had a bloody reputation, but she didn’t know the true extent of it until it was too late. When I was ten, she planned for us to run away from it all. We were caught, and my father took great pleasure in making her death as painful and long as possible. Then he hung her dismembered body from the chandelier in the receiving room for a week to make sure the message stuck with me forever.”

Andrew took it all in without a single flinch or gasp, and Nathaniel was thankful for that. He knew his life had been and was and always would be tragic and bloody and horrifying, but it was easier dealt with when he didn’t have to think about just how much so it was. 

“And then when he was sure I was scared enough to never try something of the sort again,” he continued, “he had this tower built and moved me in here to keep me separate from the rest of the world. If I have no connections other than him and his people, I have no way of escaping should the idea ever take root again.”

“And extra _lessons_ are given when necessary,” Andrew mused, an allusion to the wounds Abby had treated and what Nathaniel had said about his father’s training. 

Nathaniel nodded. “Yes.”

Andrew studied him for a long moment, hazel eyes intense on his face. Nathaniel wondered if he would be able to see straight through to his soul if he looked hard enough.

When he couldn’t take it anymore, he asked, “Tell me what deal you want to make.”

“You still have a question to ask,” Andrew reminded him. 

Nathaniel tilted his head. “Can’t I save it?”

Andrew went back to considering him before saying, “I suppose so.”

“Good,” he said. “Then, tell me what deal you want to make with me.”

For too long, Andrew said nothing, and Nathaniel wondered if whatever he had been trying to garner from their little game of truths had made him decide against this _deal_. But when Andrew finally did break the silence, it was with five words and one name that Nathaniel never would have expected to hear from his lips: 

“What do you know about Kevin Day?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope you enjoyed it :) Any feedback always makes my day. I might post the next chapter Thursday (since it's kind of a part two continuation) but it's also still really choppy and bleh, so maybe not. 
> 
> Anyhow, thank y'all for reading and thank you to all the wonderful people who commented and whatnot on the last chapter <3<3

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! If you made it this far, you are a truly wonderful human being and thank you for reading even beyond the actual story. This is my first attempt at a fanfic in couple of years and hopefully y'all enjoyed. Anyway, if I made any mistakes or anything, feel free to let me know so I can fix it!! And, of course, comments would be greatly appreciated if you have anything to say :)


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